Gujarat Launches India’s First Trading Programme to Combat Particulate Air Pollution
Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani launched India’s first trading programme to combat particulate air pollution on World Environment Day 2019, which has air pollution as its theme.
The programme is a market-based system where the government sets a cap on emissions and allows industries to buy and sell permits to stay below the cap.
Being initiated in Surat by the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB), the emission trading scheme (ETS) was designed with the help of a team of researchers from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), the Economic Growth Center at Yale University and others from The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).
Under the cap and trade system, the regulator first defines the total mass of pollution that can be put into the air over a defined period by all factories put together.